HUGE UPDATE! - My marketing journey

I'm putting this out there for the new author and for the reader who's curious on what it takes for an author to 'get seen'. I'm also writing this for myself, so I can remember what I did, what I think worked, and what didn't. If no one else reads this, I know it will at least be helpful for me. (I may be updating this particular post regularly!)

I didn't know much when I completed my first book in November last year (by completed, I mean  written, edited and had an advanced reader or two, created a cover, etc). To be honest, I still don't know much, but this is what I'm doing and I'm happy with the results so far. (results at the end)

In November 2025, I created an Amazon account... googling the heck out of everything about the process. I think it took me most of November to feel confident about everything so that I could launch on November 29th. The only reason I chose that day was because Thanksgiving was over, the house was clean and I felt like there was nothing holding me back. I didn't have a plan. I didn't do any kind of pre-launch. I just clicked the publish button. Whatever I didn't yet know about how Amazon works, I figured I'd learn the hard way. I'd already tried to learn what I could through research. There was only one way left - let the rubber hit the road.

Initially, I only made the ebook available. I wanted to do more proofreading to catch any other grammatical errors before making the book available in print. It was far easier to update an ebook and more people would likely be buying that long before spending extra dollars on print for an author that had no reviews and no visibility.

For Amazon, I'd decided to go with the Kindle Select program, which allows readers who have a monthly subscription to Kindle to 'purchase' my book for free. I went with the 30% royalty so I could make the purchase price for everyone else as low as possible - $0.99.  This selection also let me earn royalties from the pages read. Again, I wasn't trying to earn any kind of money off this thing. I just wanted people to read it and give me feedback. The reviews were what I wanted, and I wanted there to be no risk for people to give me a chance.

It's one thing to feel like you've cracked the code on how to write and structure a story well (I will go into my long journey in another post), but it's another thing altogether when your work gets in the hands of complete strangers who don't need to spare your feelings. I wanted the brutal honesty of the internet.

(Since I didn't exactly document the early days, my memory may be a tad sketchy on some details in the timeline, so take the next bit with a grain of salt.)

After some research on how to obtain visibility, I learned about Goodreads and set up an author account with links to my book. I worked in the discussion groups trying to create as real a connection as one can and finding discussions where it made sense to soft promote my book. I still don't fully understand the ecosystem of Goodreads, but I'm learning.

Around this time, I targeted a free promo in the 90 day Kdp select period and then told everyone I could about it.. friends, family, etc. 

I also put out an ad on Bookbub under their New releases promo on Dec 23rd which garnered about 200 purchases over the remainder of the month.

Over the next 3 months, I soft promoted on Twitter, Facebook groups, Instagram...(I don't have TikTok, but I hear that's a great place in their booktok groups). I did another promo with a Silent Book club group. That was interesting.

I ran an Amazon Sponsored Products ad from Dec 12 to Jan 3rd, using the CPM option to try and get broad visibility, but that felt like shooting in the dark. How can I monitor the progress on it, when the 'goal' is just to make the book visible. The only metric that actually shows up as people who've seen the book, are people who purchase the book. And as you can expect, the 'conversion rate' was very low. I guess that's the purpose of CPM, but I felt dissatisfied with it.

I ran another ad in Amazon in February, trying to change the variables to make the results better, but after a few days, it still felt like wasting money. It's possible that my goals and my budget to achieve them are not in alignment.

I collected several reviews (not just stars, but ones where they actually left a comment) on Goodreads and eventually built a similar number up on Amazon. 

From November 2025 to the end of February 2026, I gained 420 purchases. Most days were around 2 books sold. Some days would spike to 9 books sold. The sales were fairly steady, but I could tell the momentum was slipping. More and more days would come up goose eggs.

So I figured it was time to push for another little bump, to see if I could get the averages back to more than 0 per day.

Some years earlier, I had become aware of Bookbub and Bookbarbarian, so I knew I could run a promo through them. I had run an ad with Bookbub at the beginning and that was probably the largest boost at that time, so I knew I was likely going to try that again.

But a few weeks ago, I asked Chatgpt some questions and it popped out a strategy that I have since employed. It told me of several other newsletter sites that I'd never heard of.

The plan it laid out:

The goal is to create a build-up of well-timed ads so that it creates a kind of synergy and buzz.

1. In Amazon, set a free promo week 2 weeks out. This gives enough time for some of the advertising sites to schedule your ad. One site in particular needs at least 7 days to give an answer on whether they'll accept your ad. Another one fills up quick, so you have to set your ad on days they have openings.

I set my free days to go from Tuesday to Saturday. My reasoning was that most people may ignore their emailers on Monday that aren't work related. Later in the week, people start looking for entertainment options.

2. Create a maximum spike - On day one of the Free promo week, I set up 2 ads.

I set one ad with Bookbub, using the CPC model of their ads (aka pay per click) that has a visible 'conversion rate' so I can see the real impact of dollars spent on it. I, more or less, followed the recommended settings from Bookbub and gave it a budget I was willing to spend. This ad runs for the whole Free week.

The other ad was with Freebooksy.  Holy Cow! The impact of that ad was HUGE.

I know I said I'd show the results at the end, and I will, but for a teaser, this one ad generated over 1,500 sales.

Now, of course, a good bit of the heavy lifting here is the kind of book, the cover image and the advertising blurb used. If you have these things solid - they all look appealing to a new reader, then you can achieve solid results like this.

3. Day two - I had 3 ads running. The Bookbub CPC ad, an ad with The Fussy Librarian, and an ad with Robin Reads. With all 3 combined, I made a little over the number of sales from the first day. I think it was obvious that I had to have had a residual effect of the first day of ads. Roughly 1,600 purchases!

4. Day three - I placed another 3 ads. The Bookbub CPC ad, an ad with Book Barbarian and an E Reader News Today ad. For this day, there were 1,200 purchases.

5. Day four and five - Only the residual Bookbub ad remains.

On day four - significant drop off. Throughout the whole day, I sold 231 books.

So far, I sold over 5,000 books!! (from launch to present)

My amazon rankings shot through the roof. This was the high-water mark of the advertising blitz. (Results below)

On day five - similar result as day four. Throughout the whole day, I sold 111 books.

After that, no ads in place until Monday

Back to the slog of less than 10 sales a day at the regular price of $0.99.

These are the sites:

Freebooksy and/or Bargainbooksy - best response especially for cost

Robin reads - medium response (was wise to double up with another ad)

Fussy librarian - medium response (was wise to double up with another ad)

Bookbarbarian - great response - over 1k books sold

Bookbub - moderate response, decent results over the long term - xxx clicks to Amazon (great dashboard to see which country is buying, how many clicks per day, etc)

Total results

Books sold:

    Before ad blitz: 422

    During ad blitz: 4,712

    total as of March 15: 5,134

Amazon rankings

#41 Kindle overall

#1 Cyberpunk

#1 Post-Apocalyptic

#1 Dystopian

#1 Androids, Robots and AI

4.1 stars on average (so far, this ranking seems pretty solid, so I expect it to hold.)

30 reviews (most reviews were earned prior to this ad blitz. With this many new potential readers, I estimate there will be over 100 reviews added over the next few months.)

I'm 'locked in' to the Amazon KDP program for a while longer, but as soon as the period elapses, I plan to try to 'go wide' as they say, and see if I can use these numbers to perhaps enter bookstores or other options. We'll see!

So now that all those free books are out in the wild, the hope is that everyone who 'bought' one would read it, but we all know that some people just like to collect free things and it sits on their shelf collecting dust.

Based on the three months prior to the add blitz, of the 422 sold, about 33,000 pages have been read. Since this is a 239 page book, that means roughly 140 books have been read. (At least, that's one way to calculate it!)  If that is a consistent rate to assume, then that means roughly 34% of the books purchased will be fully read. That would calculate to 1,600 books read, and around 382,000 pages read. With the KENP program at roughly 0.004 cents per page, that would equate to about $1,500. Not bad for a free book.

.... of course, that's all an assumption of possibility. 

Hope any of that was helpful in your journey!